INDIAN ARBITRATION REGIME; HERALD A NEW EPOCH

The Indian judiciary has laid down various laws, which narrow the front through which Indian courts can intervene in arbitral procedures an arbitration regime that was afflicted with various problems including those of high costs and delays. To compliment that, the Government has also been cognizant of the urgent need to restrict judicial scrutiny, both during the pendency of arbitration, and after an award is made. In order to address these challenges, the Law Commission came up with its 246th Report on proposed amendments to the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996and Government passed the, The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 ("Amendment Act"), which is most certainly a welcome change and has been addressed for providing the much needed impulse to the growth of the Indian arbitration regime. Despite some deviations, the Amendment Act is largely in consonance with the Law Commission Report and the Arbitration Ordinance. However, there have been lapses in drafting the new law, and some more steps could have been taken by the law makers to ensure that India does indeed become the international commercial hub This paper, therefore, seeks to analyze the challenges that the Indian arbitration regime has faced in the previous few years and discuss how the Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2014 has sought to address them and to provide perceptions and critically evaluates the Amendment Act with suggestions to make the Arbitration Act more operative.